Peter Hedges

writer/director Ben Is Back

PETER HEDGES (Director, Writer, Producer) is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and film director. In 2003 Hedges made his feature-film directorial debut with Pieces of April, starring Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson and Oliver Platt. The acclaimed film garnered numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Clarkson, and Variety named Hedges to its 2003 list of “10 Directors to Watch.” In 2007 Hedges directed and co-wrote Dan in Real Life, starring Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche, and in 2012 he wrote and directed The Odd Life of Timothy Green, with Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton. Hedges’ first novel was the basis for the 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, which he also wrote. His other novels are An Ocean in Iowa (1998) and The Heights (2010). The three books have been published in 22 languages. Hedges’ screenplay adaptations include Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World and Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. A 1984 graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Hedges founded the Edge Theatre in 1985, in collaboration with Mary-Louise Parker and Joe Mantello. Over a threeyear period, he wrote 12 works for the company. His other plays include “Baby Anger” (Playwrights Horizons), “Good as New” (Manhattan Class Company/South Coast Repertory), “Imagining Brad” (Circle Repertory) and “The Girl in Pink” (Atlantic Theater Company). Hedges has taught at Yale University, Bennington College and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has served as a creative advisor to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and had residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the Millay Colony. Hedges grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the poet Susan Bruce. They have two sons, Simon and Lucas, and two dogs, Willy and Sadie-Goat.